Destroyed 28 June 1969 at Uli in Biafra, Nigeria,
during the Biafran Airlift.

Mercenaries to the
core!By Robin Hilton Anderson Capt.
ret.

In the early 1960s I had been taken on by
Jack Malloch from Wenela – Francistown, as captain in Air Trans
Africa on his Douglas DC-4 Skymaster in Salisbury, mostly flying
inclusive tour groups from there to Mauritius.

We once flew military supplies from
Lisbon to Sao Tome Island also, but that is another story! In
December of the year of appointment I was taken aback when all his
pilots were given their marching orders and no Xmas bonus! This I
later learnt was his way of saving money, but I was already back
home and did not go back after the holidays, as others regularly
did.

Having returned to South Africa and begun
another earth-moving business, I was again surprised to get a call
from them later, asking if I would like to fly DC-4, VP-YTY,
construction number 10397, out of Libreville in Gabon to Biafra in
North Western Nigeria, and get paid in U.S. Dollars. Being
under-capitalised, I jumped at the offer and left my elder brother,
Neville, in charge of the Caterpillar machines, and soon flew into
Libreville in Gabon, by then UTA, DC-8.

The pilot in charge, whose nickname was
'The Beard', checked me out with a few circuits and landings and
acknowledged that I would 'do'. - I had at that time nearly 3,000
hrs. on DC-4s with Trek Airways between Johannesburg and
Europe.

That evening at the resort type hotel we
stayed at, a tropical downpour arose just on dinner time and in
running along the pathways back to the main building I found myself
being bombarded by green coconuts dislodged from tall palm trees by
the deluge! One crew member at table indicated that one should wait
out the storm as these 'missiles' weighed all of fifteen pounds and
could do you serious harm on contact – this was the sum total of any
advice about local conditions offered, both about weather or flying
into Uli airport in Biafra! I was soon to learn why!

On being appraised of who my crew would
be on the next flight I naturally spoke to them about their
experience on the DC-4 and was pleased to learn that both my
co-pilot and flight engineer had SAAF experience and had done quite
a few trips to Uli. We arrived at around four in the afternoon for
the pre-flight check on this first flight to find that the batteries
were as flat as a pancake and all the electrical switches that could
be on, were on! I asked Jan the co-pilot and the flight engineer
Piet, who could have done this and they told me they thought it was
the young Polish pilot who had said he was coming out to the airport
to familiarise himself with the cockpit, that day. “Do we have
ground power units at all the fields besides Libreville?,” I then
asked of them and they answered in the affirmative. Knowing the
batteries would not accept a charge when so flat I also checked that
the unit at Uli was a good one and in working order. Accordingly we
hitched up to the Power Cart and fired up the motors. On checking
the fuel gauges I saw we had full tanks as I had been told they gave
the vehicles at Uli fuel, whilst being offloaded.

So we got airborne for the Island of Sao
Tome West of Gabon, to load up our cargo. It was dark by the time we
landed and the operations staff said we would have to move the
aircraft to facilitate loading. Jan wanted to do this himself so I
agreed, but said I would come along to look over the cargo. All went
well until I found that there were no weight stamps on the 160 steel
ammunition boxes to be loaded and no scales to weigh them! Lifting a
crate myself I was sceptical that they could only weigh 100lbs. each
and asked if this was the regular type and number of boxes carried
on previous flights? “Yes”, I was told by my crew and accepted what
they said, but determined that I would see that we had some
heavy-duty-hand-held-pendular-type scales for the next flight. Eight
tons and nearly full fuel was a heavy load for such a short field as
it was then, so I took full power against the brakes as close as I
could get the 'four' to the end of the concrete and with twenty
flaps extended we commenced our take-off. We got airborne on a
gentle rotation with the far end of the runway in close proximity
and I kept her just above the concrete to pick up speed in ground
effect, not knowing that the land fell away steeply to the sea, just
after the runway end!

Immediately on crossing the runway
threshold Tango Yankee sank sickeningly towards the water and I
smoothly rotated further to arrest the rate of sink, calling for
“Gear Up!”. This left the landing lights shining upwards and of no
use. Switching them off I could luckily discern the water by
moonlight just below, and as the airspeed agonizingly slowly inched
upwards, I finally could start to climb away and only then called
for a reduction to Metopower. (Maximum, Except Take-Off.)

Obviously we were overweight to a great
degree and the need for those scales and reworking the fuel load
became a priority upon our return to Libreville. Later on in the
climb-out at high climb power I asked if the cargo had ever been
weight tested, and the answer was “No!”. Checking with Jan if he was
happy with our routing to Uli I enquired of our ETA the Nigerian
coast and destination. We were not communicating with any ground
stations, only listening out on their frequencies. We also flew
without navigation lights and very low instrument illumination in
proximity to the coast and overland!

There was a NDB (Non-Directional radio
Beacon) at Uli and I was pleased to see the needles stiffen up
straight ahead as our arrival time approached. Ten minutes out and
on the descent we called runway control and were given a QNH
(altimeter setting for landing) and with the wind calm, asked for a
straight in approach and landing, which was approved. A few miles
out on long final we got the runway lights which appeared in
extended straight parallel lines and remained so on short final. We
were landing on a widened section of hardened earth road running
through a coconut tree plantation and the straight lines with
apparently equal spacing of the lights, confirmed that it would be
relatively flat.

With all the landing checks having been
done and full flaps extended we became aware of the extreme height
of the palm trees lit up by the landing lights. I progressively
called for a reduction in power settings keeping in mind our
overweight condition and aiming to just clear the trees and lose
height rapidly thereafter, so as not to waste runway, but have a
smooth flare onto the ground. From 20 inches boost I rotated just
above the ground calling for fifteen inches, from which point we
usually asked for “Power slowly off,” as one settled into the
nose-up touchdown attitude. The runway lights remained stretched out
ahead.

Suddenly, they all disappeared and we
were once again staring into pitch blackness, with the landing
lights once more probing the sky at an even more acute angle than
before! A ground power failure, I thought, and being but ten feet or
so above the runway I called for “POWER OFF!”, before we could
possibly drift off the estimated centreline; so the touchdown was
firm but not hard by any means! – I had the control column hard back
against my stomach. The runway lights had come back on soon after
grounding the nose wheel and a loud 'bang' from the starboard side
indicated a burst tyre, followed by another bang and a lurch to the
right meant we had lost both tyres on that side! “Shutdown number
three” I called, “and 'dress the prop'!” (This meant having one
blade facing vertically above the engine to give the other two
clearance from the ground in case of any irregularities in the
surface.)

The speed fell off rapidly with the right
oleo's wheels running on their rims and I asked for a turnoff point,
telling runway control our predicament, but to no avail! I kept
being told to continue to the end, which slowly we did, and it took
all of twenty minutes! During this time we heard that the lights had
not gone off, and deduced that in landing short we had probably
encountered a section of rising ground not used before, as I had
been told on enquiring, that the surface was flat! Finally vacating
the runway onto a tarmac hard standing we shutdown and I told Piet
not to engage the control lock, as the red warning strap from the
floor-mounted lock running up in front of the captain's seat to the
reel in the roof, was missing!

Discussing what best to be done Piet said
they would remove the outer port wheel and block off the hydraulic
brake line, then mount it on the inner starboard position and bend
the outer brake line flat to close it off also. This should allow of
a short take-off, and with a smooth touchdown at Libreville, we
should be alright. He went to work jacking up the port oleo whilst
the cargo was being unloaded. It soon became apparent that the jack
was inadequate so, having refuelled a jeep from our tanks I went
looking for a more robust jack from every aircraft that landed, and
found that they were using different turnoff points from the runway!
Telling Piet and Jan to wait until the DC-4 was unloaded and try
again, I continued searching. In my absence they scrounged a truck
jack and got the port wheel off, but could not lift the starboard
side high enough to mount it there. Making do, they dug a hole
through the tarmac and with the aid of a new twenty ton bottle jack
I had just got from a Red Cross Transall; they were able to fit the
good wheel.

This had taken the rest of the night I
might add and dawn was glimmering in the East when at last we were
ready to go. Filling in the hole and delivering the borrowed jack to
the jeep driver with strict injunctions to make sure the Transall
crew got it back on their next flight, we boarded and fired up with
the help of their also-now-refuelled power cart. Being empty we were
able to move on idle power whilst the cylinder head temperatures
built up, and reaching the runway end we immediately took 30 inches
power and then 48” against the brakes and with 20 degrees flap
extended began our take-off roll, lifting off after a very short
run, only to find the DC-4 turning to the right! Realising then that
in the rush to get airborne I had not checked the controls fully and
the lock was still in! - There is a lot of 'play' in this locking
system - Pulling back the number one throttle to idle I was able to
get the power from the starboard engines to bring us back onto the
centreline and re-opened that engine to 40”. “S... !, get that
F...... control lock out and don't touch anything! ,”I shouted. The
building speed and offset rudder fin were now countering the
clockwise rotation of the four propellers, so I pushed the outside
port engine power lever back up even with the other three whilst
lightly jiggling the controls in all directions to assist Piet in
freeing the lock.

Now the hundred foot high palm trees and
bamboo were showing up in the landing lights at the far end of the
strip and I began winding the trim forward, using the small trim
surface as an elevator and telling Jan to be ready to assist on the
control column if need be, when the lock eventually came out! VP-YTY
lifted it’s nose and cleared the wall of vegetation ahead and I
reached up and switched off the landing lights as we did so.
Settling down to instrument flying the lock finally came out and we
were able to clean up the aircraft and go to climb power without
further incident.

“Why was the lock still in?,” I asked of
Piet and he said that the prop-blast from other aircraft had obliged
him to lock the controls to keep ours from getting damaged when they
turned in close proximity to our ship.

Luckily it was still pretty dark when we
crossed the coastline and we were not intercepted by the Nigerian
L29 jet fighters coming out of Port Harcourt and Kano, some of which
were flown by fellow South Africans, one of whom was an old buddy
from Trek Airways; Bill Fortuin. It was said that these guys would
whistle “Daar KOM die Ali Baba, die Ali Baba die KOM oor die see,”
when approaching Uli on their dawn attacks, on our frequency, as a
subtle warning to us freighters to clear the area fast!

Arriving in bright equatorial sunlight
back at base I repeatedly asked the tower to have the fire trucks
adjacent the runway on landing as I might have to use the emergency
air brakes to stop and this could cause a fire if a wheel locked up.
They did not understand and we proceeded on the approach for a short
landing, except that as initial flap was extended I noticed the
hydraulic quantity gauge drop to almost zero and told Jan to leave
the flaps there as I wanted to still have fluid left for the brakes.
(After bleeding the brakes at Uli, there was no more reserve
hydraulic fluid left.) Dragging the Skymaster in on power I had Piet
progressively reduce the boost so that we touched smoothly with a
trickle of power on at a slow speed and held the nose up high until
it wanted to drop, then quickly lowered the nose wheel towards the
surface and whipped the column back into my stomach to cushion the
actual runway contact of the tyre. Calling for numbers 1 and 4
engines to be shut down we were able to clear the runway and taxi up
to the hangar without using the brakes, but now our French engineers
wanted us to taxi up a slope into the narrow hangar itself! Although
the brakes had shown serviceable I was not going to push my luck any
further and we parked just short at 90 degrees to the
doors.

Thanking my crew for their stout efforts
I shook hands all round and we left 'Tango Yankee' to get some 'TLC'
from the ground staff.

It turned out that, that young Polish
moron was clamouring to be made a captain to get the $700 a trip! He
was the only crew member who could communicate in French with the
paymaster, who was in control of the operation, and he did all he
could to get rid of anyone in his way! He later came to the RSA and
wiped himself out flying into power lines!

VP-YTY came to a similar ignominious end
when Jack Wight landed at Uli and did get to turn off before the end
of the runway, but turned the wrong way on re-entering for a
mid-field take-off and ended up in amongst the bamboo and palm
trees!

Makes one wonder if that missing red
warning control lock strap, had ultimately got its final
victim?!